Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast expands to hundreds of homes (2022)

Hey! I did this too - CenturyLink wanted an insane amount of money to bring fiber to our place, now we service hundreds and we&#x27;re growing into a major contender in Boulder County - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ayva.network" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ayva.network</a>

Sonic started as a little local ISP in Santa Rosa, CA.[1] Now it&#x27;s huge in Northern California.<p>I have 1GB Sonic bidirectional fiber with unlimited data and could get 10GB if I wanted. The head of Sonic points out that long-haul prices have decreased over the years, and there&#x27;s no real need for usage limits.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sonic_(ISP)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sonic_(ISP)</a>

This ISP was actually part of a detailed study in my college class on networking. The founder created a singular example of an &quot;open-source ISP&quot; [1], and I am pretty sure you can find his guidance online somewhere if you were inclined to build your own.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg</a>

To get maximum effect, he now needs to write a book. Eventually, someone will come along and make the book into a movie. Soon after, that movie will be shown via Comcast!

He gave a presentation at NLNOG 2020, &quot;Getting Fiber To My Town&quot;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ASXJgvy3mEg</a><p>* Slides: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nlnog.net&#x2F;static&#x2F;live&#x2F;nlnog_live_sep_2020_jared.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nlnog.net&#x2F;static&#x2F;live&#x2F;nlnog_live_sep_2020_jared.pdf</a><p>* 2020: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24424910">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24424910</a><p>* He posted some replies in that discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=jaredmauch">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;user?id=jaredmauch</a><p>Involves trenchers. Also, at NANOG, &quot;Starting a Telephone Company in 2019, or How I Built Fiber to my Neighbors&quot;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Twe6uTwOyJo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Twe6uTwOyJo</a>

I read about “future proofing” and “expansion” possibilities of one’s fiber connection. And related user equipment.<p>My story is in the opposite direction.<p>We and everyone else in the neighborhood had symmetrical 1 Gbps installed about 15 years ago. We all paid the ISP for the top tier of full capacity.<p>During Covid decided to take inventory of our actual bandwidth needs.<p>Anything that can be deferred doesn’t count. Gone from instant bandwidth requirements are all cloud backups, OTA OS upgrades and apps updates. They need to complete overnight. Overlapping is not a requirement.<p>Videos are automatically played at 480p or less on iPhones, 720p or less on iPads and 1080p or less on HDTV. We purposely didn’t buy 4K TV because at our viewing distance has no benefits whatsoever. Aggregate peak bandwidth required here is 25 Mbps at a stretch. That is also enough for my wife to work from home.<p>We don’t deal with large datasets or raw videos over the internet.<p>So we found ourselves with one cable connected TV and the usual assortment of mobile devices connected to one WiFi 4 1x1 hotspot. At 70 Mbps we never noticed any loss of quality in our digital lifestyle.<p>After about ten years we replaced the hotspot with one capable of WiFi 5. An overkill but needed the extra port.<p>Eventually convinced the ISP to lower our subscription to the lowest available tier of 200 Mbps. We don’t notice any difference. We could afford the extra bandwidth. But don’t see the benefits of it.

Around 8 years ago I saw an AT&amp;T truck on our street, and the guys installing some fiber into our street conduits. I was ecstatic &amp; started checking AT&amp;T website periodically to see when the service will be enabled.<p>Guess what? It&#x27;s still not enabled. AT&amp;T only did it because there was a risk that Google Fiber will do it in our city. Unfortunately, IIUC, Google never could overcome local regulations and abandoned the project. So, AT&amp;T didn&#x27;t care to light up their fiber (that was already in the ground &amp; ready to go!!!).<p>Comcast doesn&#x27;t offer any cable in my location neither.<p>I&#x27;ve been seriously tempted to do it myself too, but doubt I&#x27;ll ever have time for that - mostly to overcome the local bureaucracy to get all the permits...<p>Huge respect to Jared!

This article is dated 2022. Can you append (2022) to the title?

In Russia we get 500-1000mbps (for real) for about 5-10$ monthly, every home has few ISP options with free installation

I hope more community ISPs happen &lt;3

Impressive that he managed to sneak in there, usually the incumbents do everything they can to block anyone from competing, hence the absurd amount of lobbying they do against municipal ISPs, which Comcast and friends are so scared of that they&#x27;ve successfully enacted many <i>state-level bans</i> of the entire concept.<p>(Quick but AI-sourced summary: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatgpt.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;68004134-f9b0-8008-9b77-f43d1750c50a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chatgpt.com&#x2F;share&#x2F;68004134-f9b0-8008-9b77-f43d1750c5...</a> )

Telecomms told my area for decades that it was unprofitable to give internet access. We didn&#x27;t even have DSL. Small local wireless networks filled the gap, but barely because this area is covered in tall trees and no significant high points. 2 years ago a fiber co-op started, covered nearly everything in a 60 mile radius with direct-to-home fiber, and are making bank and continuously expanding.

Would love to see more about the power and networking equipment and vendors involved for serving as an ISP. Obviously needs to be highly available and redundant at nearly all levels.<p>Ubiquiti has made huge leaps and bounds in the last year in terms of software and hardware. Realistically Ubiquiti Network could be used at the enterprise ISP level.<p>- 48 port 25G SFP28 switch with hot-swap power (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.ui.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;category&#x2F;all-switching&#x2F;products&#x2F;ecs-aggregation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.ui.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;category&#x2F;all-switching&#x2F;products&#x2F;e...</a>)<p>- Gateway &#x2F; router with 25G SFP28 WAN and LAN with hot-swap power (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.ui.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;category&#x2F;cloud-gateways-enterprise-scale&#x2F;products&#x2F;efg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.ui.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;en&#x2F;category&#x2F;cloud-gateways-enterpris...</a>)

NYC has a collective that provides internet for free&#x2F;donation based if you pay ~$160-290 for the equipment to get you connected. I forget what they provide in terms of speed, but its not insignificant.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;map.nycmesh.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;map.nycmesh.net&#x2F;</a>

I admire that the homepage for the ISP - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;washftth.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;washftth.com&#x2F;</a> - is literally the default Debian Apache&#x2F;httpd welcome page with new content inserted. The #CD214F color is the giveaway.

&gt; 1Gbps [symmetrical] with unlimited data for $79 a month.<p>This costs $500 in Australia in the inner city.

I really wonder how the availability of Starlink affects these sorts of projects.

A guy in my city did something like this, except he started back in the dialup internet days and then transitioned to fiber over the years. I don&#x27;t think it was specifically to take on comcast, more just to be in the ISP business in general. Family Video eventually invested in the company and quite a lot of people in the area have it now as it&#x27;s basically the only fiber to home option in the area.

Every time someone complains about their ISP I encourage them to think about starting their own. If you&#x27;re a nerd it doesn&#x27;t seem impossible at all - in fact it&#x27;s happened many many times before. Obviously, a lot of people need stable jobs and the like, but if even a small percentage of people end up taking some steps, that&#x27;s great.

The ultimate sysadmin flex.

I&#x27;m about to switch from Spectrum to GVEC, a regional ISP and utility co-op started by farmers. It&#x27;s about as good as Google Fiber but much more widely-available here, and doesn&#x27;t give more money to a megacorp.

Impressed that he got cell towers to backhaul over it. Wouldn’t have expected that.<p>Says a lot about how shit the competition is if they’d rather take a chance on a startup

instead of spending 1000s of dollars buying all the equipment in USA, mauch should buy everything from india for less than half the price

Btw why not starlink?

Reformed ISP owner here: don&#x27;t do this. There&#x27;s a reason the cableco&#x2F;telco doesn&#x27;t want to serve these customers.

Let&#x27;s hope he actually delivers. This company took $9MM of government grants and squandered it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mynews4.com&#x2F;on-your-side&#x2F;ask-joe&#x2F;ask-joe-usda-cuts-ties-with-uprise-pulls-27-million-in-federal-funding#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mynews4.com&#x2F;on-your-side&#x2F;ask-joe&#x2F;ask-joe-usda-cuts-t...</a>